


Steve Discovers Hobby Lobby

by DomesticatedChaos



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Gen, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, meddling!Natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4080412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DomesticatedChaos/pseuds/DomesticatedChaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Steve has is a small set of Crayola colored pencils. He says he doesn't need anything else. Natasha thinks otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steve Discovers Hobby Lobby

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads up, this is set directly after the Avengers movies. CA:TWS hasn't happened yet, never mind Age of Ultron.
> 
> THIS IS BASICALLY ONE GIANT EXCUSE TO HAVE STEVE AND NATASHA BE BROS AND SHOP AT AN ART STORE.

Steve found some colored pencils at the bodega down the street from his SHIELD-issued apartment, and had been thrilled. Art pencils had been hard enough to find in the war, and colored pencils nearly impossible. It’d been awhile since he’d even held one. He supposed he could’ve asked SHIELD for a set—hell, just art supplies in general--but every time an agent came by to check on him and see if he needed anything, he couldn’t bring himself to ask. They were a luxury, and he didn’t need luxuries right now.

Needing and wanting were two different things.

But he found a set, and for a price similar to that fancy coffee that seemed to be sold around every corner. (It certainly wasn’t _Italian_ coffee, no matter what they tried to call it. Maybe it was English. The English never could quite figure out coffee.)

The pigment was waxy and not at all good. He could practically watch the bloom set in as he carefully shaded the lines of the park scene he had sketched earlier. But it was the first color he had worked with artistically in months—make that decades, technically—and Steve liked them.

Until two days later, when Agent Romanoff snuck up behind him and whistled.

“Damn, Rogers.”

He tried not to jump, but Romanoff had a way of startling Steve out of his skin. He twisted in his seat to face her, attempting to close his notebook as he did so. She stuck a hand out and carefully guided his hands back so his sketchbook lay flat once more.

“These are really good.” She brushed a thumb across the shiny black—more gray now, thanks to the damned wax—of Barton’s bow, pulled taut to his chin, eyes deadly and focused on something off the page. She flipped to a page previous, where Steve had drawn Thor, cape billowing in the wind, hair flying and lightning streaking in the background.

Romanoff flipped a few more pages, but the scenes quickly turned back to cityscapes and architectural studies. “What?” She leaned closer to him, smirking. “No me?”

“Not yet,” Steve admitted. He saw her lips twitch upwards the barest amount, and he felt an odd mixture of pride that she’d want him to draw her and hesitance that he wouldn’t be able to do her justice. “The red won’t be good enough anyway. It’ll just fade to pink.”

She considered him for a moment before snagging one of the pencils he had piled onto the table. “Crayola?” she read. “You did all this with Crayola pencils?”

Steve shrugged.

Romanoff raised an eyebrow at him and stared like he was insane. “How do you not have better art supplies?”

Steve looked at his pencils. The black was already half its original length. He looked away. “These work okay.” It’s not like he was doing pieces for an art gallery or anything. This was just… hobby work.

But Romanoff was already straightening up and swiping at her at her phone with an irritated look on her face. She didn’t say anything, just pursed her lips until something finally pleased her. With a small smirk, she deposited her phone back into her pocket and looked at Steve once more.

“C’mon, Cap. We’re going shopping.”

*

Agent Romanoff had brooked no questions—although Steve had tried—and commandeered a car to drive them to a part of the city Steve hadn’t yet explored. He was torn between looking out the windows and looking at her, who was clearly speeding but drove with an almost lazy, loose-gripped professionalism. She wove in between cars, passing all of them while drumming her fingers on the lip of her window.

It wasn’t long before they pulled up to a large storefront, proclaiming Hobby Lobby in giant orange lettering.

And then they were inside.

Steve blinked, blurry-eyed and light blind, at the dazzling brilliance before him. The place was huge. And bright. And overstuffed with all kinds of shiny knickknacks and holiday décor and—“There’s an entire aisle for paint?” Steve asked. In a totally masculine, gruff voice. There was no way he squeaked.

Okay, he squeaked.

But even though the store was a veritable candy land of artistic supplies, Steve still wasn’t ready to spend unnecessary money on things. Even if they were really nice. And functional. And probably had a way better pigment to wax ratio….

“Thank you for taking me here, Agent Romanoff—“

“Natasha.”

“Natasha,” he corrected. “But, I don’t—“ He wasn’t even sure how he wanted to finish that statement.

Agent Romanoff—Natasha—scoffed and rolled her eyes at him. She slipped a shiny black credit card from her pocket and held it up between two fingers, practically waving it in Steve’s face. “Please, like I’m going to let anyone but SHIELD pick up the tab for this excursion.”

Steve bit his lip. Even if he wasn’t the one necessarily making the purchase, it was hardly fair to let SHIELD foot the bill.

Natasha shoved him in the back. “Come on, Rogers. SHIELD owes you this. Let us start paying you back.”

“SHIELD doesn’t owe me. If anything—“

“Stop arguing and start shopping, Rogers.”

Steve turned back to the hanging signs labelling the aisles. One of them boldly said ‘Sketchbooks’ and nothing else.

Natasha grabbed a cart and lightly shoved it into Steve’s hip. She swept her arm out in a wide gesture. “Kid. Candy store. Go nuts.”

Steve stared at her for a second. Finally, he swallowed. “Gonna need a second cart.”

Natasha smiled for the first time since he’d met her.

*

Okay, so maybe he’d gone a little overboard on the art stuff. The second cart had come in handy, even if, at the time, he had second-guessed himself about requesting it. But once he started actually putting stuff into his shopping buggy, he just couldn’t stop. In went sketchbooks of various paper types—watercolor and marker and multipurpose—a couple of each because they were on sale and he’d be saving money, right? Pencils: simple lead and graphite and colored and even this set of watercolor ones that he could sketch with then wash the paper in water to give it a painted look—or so promised the package.

He was going to have fun testing those out.

He picked up paints and brushes and sponges and erasers and exacto knives. When he started in on the canvas, he just about lost his mind—so many sizes! And pre-stretched on frames! Steve was pretty sure Natasha wouldn’t tell anyone about how he cooed at them like they were kittens for a good long minute.

“Dear lord, you’re just like Stark,” she had said.

He didn’t know if he should take offense to that or not.

By the time he had picked his fill of the canvas, they had to move onto the second cart. And then there were pastels and matte board to think about.

Steve checked his watch when he was finally about to pry himself away from his art gluttony. Two hours had passed. He sighed heavily.

Natasha nudged him gently. “I’m glad, you know,” she said with no segue at all. He turned to give her a questioning glance, but she was already continuing. “That I could do this. Show you this—what kind of stuff we have now for artists.” She cocked her head to the side. “I’m glad I was the one that helped you pick all this out.”

Steve smiled thoughtfully at her. As cold and deadly and classified as her reputation was—the way she no doubt carefully kept it—Steve was starting to really like the woman Natasha Romanoff was underneath her analytic and assessing stare.

And the fact that she could probably beat him six ways till Sunday didn’t hurt a bit, either.

“C’mon Steve,” Natasha said as she slipped passed him, pushing both the carts ahead of her. “We’re next.”

The clerk took a while to ring up all their purchases, and when she was finally done, Steve was utterly flabbergasted at the total. “Two thousand—“ He couldn’t even finish reading it off. The number was _astronomical;_ there was no way SHIELD was going to pay for all this.

“Relax, Rogers. It could’ve been a lot worse. Believe me.” Natasha gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and turned back to the clerk. She took out the shiny black credit card and swiped it through the device on the counter—a card reader, Steve reminded himself.

Before she could put it back in her pocket, Steve caught the name printed on the card. He thrust his hand out and caught Natasha’s wrist. “Wait, I thought you said SHIELD was paying for this?”

Her narrow, murderous focus softened to a half-lidded blankness. “They are.”

Steve dropped her wrist. Natasha pocketed the card. “They why,” Steve stated more than asked, “does it say Nicholas Fury on it?”

Natasha blinked at him, all innocent wide eyes and tiny pout. “But he’s SHIELD, isn’t he?” She had the gall to bat her eyelashes at him.

“Natasha—“

She waved him off, and signed the card slip that the clerk handed her. “He owes you just as much as SHIELD.” Without a backwards glance, she grabbed a cart and started wheeling it towards the exit. Steve, despite concerns, followed her anyway.

“Besides,” Natasha offered, over her shoulder, “I’ve already blamed Barton for it.” She flashed him a cheeky grin.

And really? Steve had no choice but to laugh.

*

His sparse and Spartan apartment was starting to look a lot more like a home. He had an easel set up near the window and washed-out jars holding his assortment of brushes. He had his pencil case and sketchbooks out on the kitchen table, because he did more art there than he ate meals. The place was slowly filling up with sketches of remembered faces, both in his current history and his past.

And if a painting of a certain redhead wound up in front of said agent’s door, well, Steve just considered it the first in a long line of returned favors.

 

END

 

(It didn’t, however, explain why three days later he found a note pinned to his door with an arrow, of all the ridiculous things, proclaiming “YOU OWE ME ONE, TOO.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, I know that there isn't a Hobby Lobby in NYC (in fact, the closest one is in Jersey, which is probably why Steve hasn't found it yet because, you know, Jersey.) But art stores have... personality, and that large, bright, ostentatious Hobby Lobby personality was exactly what I was looking for. So just, I dunno, pretend that in the infinite wisdom (*snorts*) of the Marvel universe, there is a Hobby Lobby somewhere east of Queens or something. Or that Natasha managed to sneak Steve over the state line without him or SHIELD noticing.
> 
> Also, I wanted to illustrate this, but unfortunately my (old, so old) laptop is slowly dying and will no longer work my art programs correctly. It also has decided that it hates my pen tablet. I'm slowly saving up for a new computer, and when I do finally get one, this story's artwork is at the top of my list to get done. And if any of you out there have a burning desire to chip a buck or two for said new computer, I've got a donation link set up on my tumblr, which is [here.](http://domesticated-chaos.tumblr.com)
> 
> Oh, and I'm on [Twitter.](https://twitter.com/ErisOReilly) Come say hi!


End file.
